


Anche per te

by redreys



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Trans Martin Blackwood, its sasha birthday and tim gives her a gift (set pre/during s1), jon and martin are walking and jon thinks about lotr, jons guilt but i describe it poetically. sort of, martin has a nightmare and jon sort of lives throught it, post mag 160. short one-shots all inspired by specific episodes, retroactive retelling of safe-house moments, sam and martin are the same person and i love them so much, sappy conversations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23502742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: On giving when it shouldn't matter. On trying anyway.__________[Or: a series of canon-compliant moments I am hopefully gonna write as the episodes come out]
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 57
Kudos: 142





	1. Here, now

**Author's Note:**

> So. I don't know how to organize these things, but the idea is that if I get the urge to write after an episode drops, I can add a chapter here and let it run alongside canon. 
> 
> The title is a bit of a bold choice because it is in Italian, but aaa it basically means "for you, too" and it is the title of a beautiful Italian song written by one of the most famous and talented Italian songwriters (Lucio Battisti, if you are wondering).  
> The chorus of that song goes: "for you, too, I would die / though I don't know how / for you, too / I’d give something I don’t have."
> 
> I don't know if you get the idea, but the story we are all following is a tragedy and also not real, so it's not like I can give anything to these characters. + what they can give to each other is somewhat limited by the ending of the world as they know it.  
> and still, they are there, together. still they breathe. still I write about them. and I just thought that was nice. despite how sappy it sounds
> 
> (oh, and as always: no beta and not a native speaker) (update: i do have a beta now! so nice)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the beginning is painful. it is not at all graphic, but it does use several metaphors to attempt to describe how terror and pain feel to Jon)

It works like this:

The pain shutters. It shutters on the floor of Jon’s mind, in a thousand little pieces, and he moves to pick them up and throw them away but there are too many and they are too little anyway, and he cannot focus and they all fade into grey, and when he bends down to pick them up, trying not to cut himself with the edges, he hears the rushing water and he doesn’t have time to turn around. The flood comes in and drowns him. He knows he doesn’t have gills, and yet he feels life most strongly when he isn’t breathing, when terror surrounds him and asks him to let himself go.

It hurts like this—

Like claiming a crown that cannot be his and yet fits, a crown that weighs him down and digs into his skin, an invisible pickaxe that wants and takes and doesn’t give back. It leaves him not with an absence but with a temporary scar that always heals and never stops hurting.

Can’t look away, can’t get rid of it. Isn’t even his.

Martin is sleeping on his side, and he is dreaming of a supermarket.

The aisles are endless and he has a list of things he is supposed to buy, of which none are for him. He cannot read the list, only the names of the people he has to help. He doesn’t know them but they are demanding and they are angry, looking, waiting. The shelves are empty, the floor is white, nobody else is around.

He is panicking. A thousand thoughts push into his head, and some are his to begin with, others are new. Odd shapes appear in the corners, shapes Martin isn’t used to fear or think about. They loom in and trap him in an empty, vast, endless nothing.

Jon is a shadow under Martin’s terror. He puts effort into hovering just about, without touching, without sinking. He feels the pull, the wish, the desire to fall, and he cannot. He cannot.

The dreams change. Martin’s feelings are often different in shape but never in colour. Jon bites his lip when the terror peaks, when the pain becomes unbearable. It serves no purpose, but when his brain takes notice of the sting, he feels human for however much it lasts.

It’s the next best thing after touching Martin, and that he cannot do. It hurts if he tries— he cannot wake him, he cannot hold. Martin flinches, moves away. Jon can do nothing more than lie beside him from the other end of the bed, no duvets no blankets, not even pillows.

Guilt hosts the scene. Shows Jon around the place, opens the door and points at the corners Jon created and cannot reach. It shows him the forgotten drawers, _and this_ , it says, _this you may never again forget_. He can feel its hand reaching into him, scraping the water as if pushing fingers between his heart and his lungs.

Jon waits for it to be over, and it never ever is, and it never ever is, and it never _ever_ is.

After a while (minutes, perhaps days, maybe hours) Martin moves. He is dreaming of falling, but slowly, so so slowly, and it is excruciating and he can’t even scream. He turns around because some part of him thinks that maybe that will do something to speed up the process.

It doesn’t, of course it doesn’t, but still Jon notices; he opens his eyes and stares at the back of Martin’s neck, trying to trace a pattern that from there can bring him back to his own humanity.

Martin’s hair rest on the mattress in soft, open curls, and his skin isn’t really damaged, but it is vulnerable.

In the middle of an end, here’s a body: it breathes and it functions, it bends to what the terror tells them, and still sometimes it stands to say Jon’s name in the silence.

Helpless, Jon reaches out to touch the hair. It is an instinctual motion that he cannot predict, and it cuts right through the flood.

He pushes two of his fingers together, feels the hair flatten out and split up under his skin, and the texture is still the right one. He holds on as if to a lifeline, and wishes he could stay there. The horror quiets down and Jon wishes stillness, quiet, intimacy. Wishes ignorance above all.

The answers, however, come anyway. Questions never phrased, never wanted, and the answers come.

Martin’s feelings eviscerate themselves into Jon’s mind to the point that he can no longer tell the difference between what is alien and what bears his name, and he aches to leave and he can’t, so he holds on, anchors himself to a place that isn’t gonna be his for much longer.

It is and fitting, and right, and terrifying.

When Martin wakes, Jon struggles to feel relief. The terror leaks into Martin’s limbs as he begins to stretch them, and Jon can only uncurl his hand and keep it there.

Martin moves by inertia, as though something was pulling him to his center of gravity, to Jon. He lets his body rise and fall to the other side of him, and by chance he lands where he is supposed to. 

The tip of his nose brushes against Jon’s knuckles, and neither of them moves. Jon’s hand is a shell without a pearl, facing the wrong direction, and Martin a wave, mid-winter— he comes close to the shell and almost sucks it back into the sea, but only manages to wet the edges.

It’s the shell, then, that moves. It turns soft, turns malleable, elegant.

Opens: rests again Martin’s cheek. Makes it its pearl.

From that single point of contact, a flow of sensation travels along Jon’s body. It pumps through him like blood, and it is freezing and terrifying. Underneath it, Jon can feel the warmth of Martin’s skin, the relief at finding him alive, finding him trembling and willing to be touched.

Martin opens his eyes to look at him. The color in them seems faded, washed out, a memory of what Jon remembers, but it still reads as Martin.

“Hi,” Martin says, voice small and composed, and Jon has trouble putting together what it takes to reply.

He wonders how he does it. The intensity of the pain Jon _knows_ he is feeling doesn’t match his tone, doesn’t translate into the way he moves his lips.

Because he can think of no other answer, Jon stars caressing Martin’s cheek with his thumb, up and down in gentle strokes, as though touching a newly painted canvas, just to check if it is dry yet. He follows the motion with his eyes, too, and Martin tries to smile, in a clear attempt to reassure— fix whatever needs fixing.

On instinct, Jon smooths down the edge of Martin’s lips. _Don’t_ , it means. _Drop that._

He tries tending to the aftermath; caressing the confused, saddened expression that follows. Leaving it bare rather than powerless, vulnerable rather than useless.

“Don’t” he says, this time out loud.

Martin frowns, takes in a breath, thinks of a complaint that will mean nothing. Jon shakes his head and lets a few tears fall down his own skin, hoping Martin will take them the right away. Hoping he will understand.

“Martin,” he adds, unsure, whispering in a oh so broken voice. “I- I am-“

“What, Jon?”

And again— Jon can see him reaching out, protecting, trying to come up with a counter-argument, a tool that will make this better.

“No, no, it’s not that. I am just- I am just. I don’t know how to say this.” He laughs a bit, because it isn’t funny but maybe it should be. Because perhaps once you get stuck in the same labyrinth one too many times, the door that isn’t a door should feel like a hilarious trick rather than a meaningless penance.

Martin stares at him, waiting for his cue, and Jon tries to get through in any way he can.

“I am so glad you are here,” he says, and it comes out in a single breath, rushing out like wind through an autumn tree, like a necessity, a wish.

Martin opens his mouth, and again Jon shakes his head.

“No. No, I am glad you are here _now_.”

_Now that you are hurting_ , he doesn’t say. _Now that you can’t speak, now that feeling your pain makes me feel worse. Now that you lie powerless, now that we both do, even now that there is no tea and no comfort and no refuge. Now,_ now _I am glad that you are here._

First, Martin shakes.

It is subtle and he tries to hide it, but he still he trembles. Next, he cries.

There is no other way to say it: he cries. The tears run down his face like seasonal rivers, like unspoken songs. Jon moves closer, rests his forehead on Martin’s. Hopes he can feel him there, too. Hopes it is enough to listen in silence, to hold his hand and breathe with him.

He wants to say _I am sorry if I let you forget_ , but he knows that is not the whole story. He wants to say _I love you_ , but he is afraid Martin might have trouble believing him. He wants to comfort him, wants to give him space to despair even if Jon has to live his nightmares, even if the world has already ended.But what if he can’t? But what if he can’t.

“Martin,” he says, in lieu of words, and Martin looks up at him.

Jon doesn’t wipe his tears, and he doesn’t tell him it will be alright because it won’t. Instead, he raises up on his elbow to kiss Martin’s cheek— his lips a soft shadow over an abandoned city, alive through the ruins.

Martin’s breath breaks in two, shatters into crumbles, fragments of darkness. He swallows it all down not a second after it has come out of him, but still he can only hide it for so long.

Almost instantly, it is out again.

And then in. And out. And in and out.

“I am here,” Jon whispers, and Martin holds him tighter.

"I know,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! couldn't get over "I couldn't wake you" and an endless stream of terrible (re: beautiful) post made by very clever people about Martin and Jon, and their trauma and their love.


	2. This Picture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Sasha's birthday, and Tim surprises her with a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set either before or during s1, written after MAG 162 and all the timsasha feelings that came with it.

Tim slides something blue across the table.

Sasha barely notices it with the corner of her eyes. It is _not_ blue, it’s merely wrapped in blue paper. A white ribbon envelops it from the sides, closes it with a neatly tied bow.

Tim is not looking at Sasha, but he is smiling— she can tell even without checking.

“What’s this for?”

“I have no idea,” he replies, all joy and artificial obliviousness. “Perhaps _you_ can enlighten me.”

Sasha lets go of the file she was holding, uncurls her hands and leaves them still, half-open. The file falls on the table with a dull, barely perceptible thud.

“Tim,” she says, theatrical just for him, and this time she doesn’t have to imagine the shape of his lips. She can see it, the line thin and wide, pleased.

"Sasha,” he concedes.

Sasha sighs, and all at once her body relaxes. She reaches behind her head to let the hair loose, and glances up at the clock. It’s a quarter past seven.

“And you waited this long,” she points out, and Tim shrugs.

“You had to believe you had won.”

“I see. I see. And _how_ exactly did you find this out, if I may?”

Seemingly unfazed, Tim reaches out to take one of the coins abandoned on Sasha’s desk. He lets it travel in the space between his knuckles, as though it had a will of its own, and he is trying _so_ hard to look like a cool pirate that the fact that he is succeeding is honestly a little unfair.

“How many youtube videos did you watch for that?” Sasha asks, off-handedly, and Tim laughs.

“Which question do you want me to focus on first?”

In lieu of an actual answer, Sasha moves forward, takes the coin from Tim’s hand and holds up his gift. “What’s this?” she says, and Tim- well. He seems so joyful he sort of shines. It's all in his face and his hands: the blue of his irises and the black of the pupil, the warmth in his cheeks; his nails half painted in purple.

“Why don’t you find out?”

The office is dark and so Tim’s voice echos in the empty room. Despite everything, it feels calm, like nothing bad could happen after all— not today, not like this.

  
“Fine, Stoker,” she whispers, and looks down at her hands.

The paper is as fancy as it can be, and she tries to unwrap it without ripping it. Underneath the paper and the ribbon, there is a leather notebook.

“I thought you might like it,” he whispers, suddenly shy, and she does like it.

It’s warned out (one should say vintage, perhaps) but it looks solid, resistant. She picks up the lace and releases it from the black button. Inside, the pages are blank.

“Thanks,” she whispers. “This is- nice. Thank you Tim.”

“Mh,” he mumbles, then slowly moves beside her with his chair. “Keep- keep turning the pages.”

She glares at him from her shoulder, watches the way he holds himself in anticipation, the gentleness hidden in his quick movements. “Why?” she asks, just to see him smile, and he holds up his hands. _No reason_. “Just keep turning the pages.”

Three fourth into the notebook, there is a thin bookmark. It looks sort of professional, plasticized in a way that makes it resistant but not ugly. The background is purple save from a couple of black roses drawn in the corners. At the very center, lies the silliest picture of Tim and Sasha that was ever taken.

“I fucking hate you,” she says, instinctively, and again he laughs.

“I went through the effort of printing it, you _have_ to keep it now.”

In the picture, Sasha is shooting at Tim with her fingers, an exaggerated macho expression on her face, and he is falling behind, leaning on her arm, a closed fist pressed against his chest and his eyes closed. The picture is a bit blurred (Martin took it; he isn’t a great photographer) but their faces are clear to the eye. Sasha looks pretty— both look happy.

“I made a copy for myself, as well.”

Sasha raises her eyebrows. “You did?”

“Of course I did,” he replies, and takes out of his pocket an identical bookmark.

“What are these, lame engagement rings for failed couples?”

Tim punches her shoulder, gives her the middle finger. “I put time and effort into this.”

“Oh I am sure you did. Can I sign yours?”

“What?”

She points to his bookmark. “That. Can I sign that?”

“Why?”

“So that we can properly get fake married?”

“Sasha James,” he begins, serious, “I’ll have you know that I am a good man, and if I do get married, I get married once. You cannot come back for this.”

“Oh, I know that,” she says, and Tim straightens himself up, adjusting the tie he is not wearing. He leans forward and takes her bookmark away from her fingers. “Let me sign it first.”

She laughs, rolls her eyes. “Why?”

“So I can set the scene.”

“The _scene_.”

“Yeah, show you how it’s done.”

“You have to sign it, Tim. What’s there to get.”

“Shut up and let me do it.”

It’s Sasha’s turn to raise her hands in surrender. He takes a permanent marker from her desk, one with a fine tip, and begins drawing something on the bookmark. He hides it with his hands, like a child in elementary school who refuses to let his classmates cheat during the final exam.

She waits, patiently, until finally he reveals his masterpiece.

“Those are two stick figures,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“That is you and me.”

“Why did you sign it _Timothy_?”

“Timothy is a full name.”

“I don’t call you Timothy.”

“You have no agency over my titles, Sasha.”

“Shut up,” she repeats, exasperated, and finally takes Tim’s half of the gift. Signs it Sasha and gives it back.

“Thanks,” he says. “Always loved your intelligible signature.”

“It is not intelligible.”

Tim frowns— _is Sasha James really trying to deny the undeniable?—_ but when she laughs and surrenders to his scrutiny, he can do nothing but look at her- look at Sasha.

Sasha, glasses always clean. Sasha who still has her favorite stuffed animal from her childhood, Sasha very good memory, sharp humour, a mole on her left cheek, touches her hair when she is _really_ focused. Sasha will take pictures with you and notice when you are down, Sasha keeps your secret and has terrible taste in movies.

“Happy birthday, beloved wife,” he says, eventually, and Sasha smiles.

It is a very good smile. One of Tim’s favorite, at that.

From behind the windows, as always, life goes on.

All in all, so far, despite everything— not much is new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title theoretically from "This Picture" by placebo. the song's narrative (according to Genius) doesn't really fit Tim and Sasha's story but- I mean. "What's wrong with this picture? / What's wrong with this picture? / Farewell the ashtray girl / Forbidden snowflake / Beware this troubled world / Watch out for earthquakes / Goodbye to open sores / To broken semaphore / You know we miss her / We miss her picture."  
> please do not think about what that bookmark must have turned into after Sasha's death!!! because I am definitely!! not thinking about it!!!!


	3. The best thing about Samwise Gamgee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Jon are walking towards yet another tragedy, and Jon starts thinking about Lord of the Rings.  
> Set post MAG 163.

_The best thing about Samwise Gamgee_ , Jon means to say, terror pouting down in and out of them, side-wise like rain in a children’s book, _is that I only liked him eventually._

_Best thing about Samwise Gamgee is that he believes, and I cannot hate him for it. Cannot disregard what keeps him standing, cannot uncurl it and explain it away._

_It’s not faith that pushes him— he is_ pulled _towards the other end of the gully, and he only earns hisfaith when he jumps. He tries and because he tries he has to have at least a chance; because he wants to jump, then there must be a way to succeed. But still, faith comes a second too late. What is there first, what envelops him deeper, what lets him win when the world allows him, is belief. He might believe in faith, but first he believes in Frodo. First, he believes_ there is some good in this world _, and isn’t that the hardest thing to come by. Isn’t the good gruelling, isn’t it like already having fallen, holding onto the cliff’s edge by your fingers?_

_The best thing about Samwise Gamgee,_ Jon thinks, over the screams and the disembodied terrors that flourish on the edges of his mind, and Martin walks beside him, slow and relentless. There’s a bit of white in his curls, and his gloved hand twitches slightly. Occasionally, he looks ahead.

The landscape says nothing, keeps silent under the Eye’s watch. Lets pain run out and begin again, in an endless cycle of confusion and agony. It’s almost crueler, this way. It doesn’t feel like the earth is an active player: it simply lets itself fall apart. It doesn’t whimper nor cry, it isn’t loud. It surrenders.

_The best thing about Samwise Gamgee_ , Jon thinks, is still that _by rights we shouldn’t even be here, but we are._

As the tower looms over them like an incorrigible omen, Jon pretends it can bring any good— conjures a good book out of it and fights to keep it relevant. The comparison sticks pleasantly only up until it distorts: _this time around,_ Jon means to say, _this time that the world is past danger, everyone has to give up whatever they have, and no one may keep anything._

_And if no one can come between me and this doom, all the same no one can step_ into _the doom at all. You step into places you can get out of. Everyone is already drowning into the water, there’s no wetting your feet and running away. The water is all there is._

_Except—_ except the best thing about Samwise Gamgee is that he asks Frodo: don’t go where I can’t follow, and still he moves past him. It’s irrelevant that Frodo isn’t actually dead— it’s irrelevant that Sam will one day reach him, even once he is gone— the best thing about Samwise Gamgee is that he hates fights and that he kills the beast when he has too.

Not _but_ he kills the beast when he has to. _And_.

The best thing about Samwise Gamgee is that he looks kind, that his hair is soft and his eyes are bright, that he isn’t afraid to be tender. Best thing about Samwise Gamgee is that you first trick yourself into thinking him irrelevant and annoying, and when he tears down your defences you can only sit back and watch.

Worst thing about Samwise Gamgee is that neither strength nor good purpose will last for Frodo, and yet _he_ still believes. And will the Dark Powers devour them both, and will the Dark Powers devour them both, and will the Dark Powers, whatever they are, devour them both.

_Yes_ , Jon means to say, and neglects to mention it could go worse.

Abruptly, and before Jon has the time to take notice, Martin’s steps get quicker— he moves closer and touches Jon’s arm. Out of what’s left of their muscle memories, at some point they find themselves holding hands. Easy like it’s nothing special. Easy like it can heal anything it wants.

“I feel like the Eye of Sauron is gonna pop up from that thing at any moment now,” Martin says, pointing at the Institute, and Jon laughs, surprised and almost embarrassed, as if he had just been found out on something embarrassing.

“Yeah,” he manages, “I get that, too.”

_Best thing about Samwise Gamgee_ , he begins again, but he doesn’t get as far as saying it out loud.

He squeezes Martin’s hand, because it’s what he can do, and Martin squeezes back.

The time that has been given to them runs out each second and then comes back again in a paler color, sharper and disgusting. The clock won’t tick, the story won’t end, the world won’t be saved, and they refuse to let go of each other.

There is no hope in trying, and hope is not the point.

 _Best thing about Martin Blackwood is that he tries anyway._ Best thing about Jonathan Sims is that he tries with him.

Silently and for no reason, their lost wandering resumes.

Stubbornly— hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> referenced quotes: 
> 
> "O Sam!" cried Frodo. "What have I said? What have I done? Forgive me! After all you have done. It is the horrible power of the Ring. I wish it had never, never, been found. But don't mind me, Sam. I must carry the burden to the end. It can't be altered. You can't come between me and this doom." [And if no one can come between me and this doom, all the same no one can step into the doom at all] 
> 
> "Sooner or later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last. Sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him." [And will the Dark Powers devour them both, and will the Dark Powers devour them both, and will the Dark Powers, whatever they are, devour them both.]
> 
> "I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are." (this one quote is from the movies; Sam says it, obviously) [The best thing about Samwise Gamgee, Jon thinks, is still that by rights we shouldn’t even be here, but we are.]
> 
> “It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them” [this time around, Jon means to say, this time that the world is past danger, everyone has to give up whatever they have, and no one may keep anything.]
> 
> "I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.  
> "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." [The time that has been given to them runs out each second and then comes back again in a paler color, sharper and disgusting.]
> 
> "Not all those who wander are lost." [Silently and for no reason, their lost wandering resumes.]
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	4. Butterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chess piece is told to win the game. He does not know the rules and it doesn’t matter.  
> He attempts to figure it out as he goes: guesses wrong. Someone takes him by his head, brings him closer to the King until he knocks him over. The game is lost. The game does not end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is basically 1k words of exploration on Jon's guilt and self-loathing written in a somewhat poetic style. I think it might transpire from my writing that I would die for him and I believe wholeheartedly that this isn't his fault, but, you know. still not the happiest thing to read.  
> written after mag 166.

The reality of things is that it lingers.

It lingers like stone, unproven. It sits unopened, inscrutable. It’s a dead weight, hanging from the margins, holding on to the heart and stretching the skin, until it wears off so it can come back for the last round. It’s a thick layer of dust, a post scriptum for every word of the page.

It’s stupid. Nonsensical, illogical, untrue. Unparalleled: to be believed, to be taken seriously or else.

It’s paying for the debt and never covering a millimetre of it. Never knowing what’s the proper currency, never guessing the price. Always giving too little, realising abruptly you are unable to turn back into life what your body has reduced to a fable.

The world doesn’t, can never fit under Jon’s soles. It still escapes his notice, runs too deep for Jon’s hands to hold. It’s all around him, it envelops him, and there is no ground unmarked. No spot untouched.

His body, his life is a result of undeserved choices, and he can’t let himself win. Relief feels wrong on his skin, it feels disgusting, it feels like a disease he is unable to eradicate. It’s the wrong ending, the wrong narrator, the irony of the villain who believes himself a saint.

The past gets rewritten so the roles fit. Everything moves around him, away from him, and all the movements become attacks, mistakes, joys he should have prevented. Called prophecies to a nightmare, and shut down. He embellishes the picture, brightens the colours, changes the memories to something prettier, something he never actually got to live through, so he can call himself a hypocrite for daring to cross his own paths. He pins himself as a pioneer of tragedy, the pinnacle of a wound-inflicting machine, never stopping not even to breathe.

Says: _I should have left, should have stayed, should have never called, shouldn’t have wished for more, shouldn’t have accepted it, shouldn’t have waited shouldn’t have moved shouldn’t have read shouldn’t have followed._

What he can do is against the rules. His own rules.

He must apologise, must hate, because that’s what he has left. He lacked the agency to choose his own powers, to dismantle them— the courage not to enjoy that freedom. And so now he hates. He pushes himself down, counterbalances the privilege he hasn’t earned. Avenges out of love and calls the love hunger, calls it egotism, calls it cruel. Refuses to speak out on it. Closes it like a secret, turns off the light. Lets it get cold, ice freezing, sharp and heavy. Then reveals it to the world with one too many strong sentences.

Begins again.

Pretends, in silence, that this is the title. That _Archivist_ is a good descriptor, a beginning and an end, a chance he took. _Archivist_ as destruction. _Archivist_ as power and terror, _Archivist_ as autonomous and intertwined with pain. _Archivist_ , as choice.

Each time, as the wind rushes out of his lungs, the truth is a plea echoing in his bones.

There’s no central voice, no force active inside of him that asks him to listen. It’s only the reflection, what’s left of the core. A promise that Jon cannot bear, but keeps anyway.

The words handwritten, spelled out in earnest. Translucent, small. Untidy.

Attempts, blue memories. Shy smiles above the water, aborted breaths just right under.

A quiet stare, survival getting under his skin. Anxious wondering, terrifying findings. Someone’s rage: righteous vengeance. Failure on all grounds.

Skin, red burning healing too fast. Missing parts, missing keys, missing person never to be found.

Tenderness— dreams you wake up smiling to. The first time you held her hand, the first time you woke up with your back to the world, your chest warm against his body. A burnt page and the right name.

Smiling at a joke, calloused hands working hard to find the perfect last line to a story you haven’t even begun writing. Best intentions and terrible mistakes. Best intentions, terrible mistakes, best intentions. Best intentions, better results. The destruction of the results, all at once. Best intentions yet again.

Exhausted, you reach out to touch the light. To ask another question.

Can’t match the impossible in intensity, so the impossible wins you over. Calls you weak— a truly unlikeable child, an annoying student, an arrogant worker, a paranoid friend, a tragic lover who never loves enough.

The child stands, the student forgets, the worker tries, the friend comes back, the lover finds his way out.

Still, the impossible calls you once more, drags you to hell and makes you listen as you confess someone else’s crimes.

A chess piece is told to win the game. He does not know the rules and it doesn’t matter.

He attempts to figure it out as he goes: guesses wrong. Someone takes him by his head, brings him closer to the King until he knocks him over. The game is lost. The game does not end.

_Jon_ , as in effort. A favorite ice-cream flavour in a world where ice-cream has ceased to exist. A request worded too harshly, a miscalculation that led to terrible consequences. An old friend and the way her name sounds in his voice. A cat, his hometown. A tower of books, a hand to hold. A point in time and space, moving always at different speeds. Some songs, a few pictures. A certain smile, a calligraphy. A list of museums he was told he should visit, a list of documentaries he will never watch: the box beside each of the names waiting empty in the back of a drawer that is no more.

The last groceries he ever bought, the last time he woke up to a future he thought he might enjoy. A conversation he overheard in a shop and liked. Noticed.

Looks stolen from strangers, warm and unexpected. Undeserved pain. A beautiful butterfly flapping her wings.

The stakes are too high and people have died. People you liked. Someone you used to laugh with, breathlessly, a bit tipsy in a half-empty pub. His friend, whom you don’t remember. The feeling of falling, and then stopping abruptly mid-air. Interrupted, like an unfinished symphony. You want to know the last note, the last sentence. You can’t. We don’t do music here, not the way you’d like.

The debt is never there, and what is there is never paid, so guilt lingers. You echo weakly inside your own body and the battle is lost.

Jon still fights.

The world, broken and terrified— stands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if Jon ever says the sentence "I know it's not my fault" during this season I am legit going to cry.  
> anyway, I honestly am not sure how this came out. it isn't written in the most coherent way, but I hope you liked it! in any case, thank you for reading 🌺


	5. A conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin and Jon are walking. The Lonely is not too far behind, the next realm is not too far ahead. There’s a space in the middle: there, they stop for a while. They sit down, and talk. The following is their conversation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set right after MAG 170.

“Are you alright?”

“I guess.”

“Sorry, that was- it was a stupid question.”

“It wasn’t, Jon. It’s okay. It’s okay that you worry. It’s nice, I think.”

“Mh. Well, that’s- it’s my job, Martin.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I get to take care of you.”

“You _get_ to take care of me?”

“It’s a very nice job.”

“Glad it is.”

“I am serious.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

“I like keeping you safe. I _want_ to do it.”

“I can tell.”

“Good.”

“Jon. Listen. You don’t need to be worried. I was being genuine back there. I know I am not alone anymore. I won’t doubt it again.”

“I am aware of that. I don’t think you will doubt again, either, and even if you do- that’s human, it happens. I won’t fault you for it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s just so hard not to give our own lies credit, even when we know that they are lies, and I simply wish I could retroactively cut the stream. I don’t want you soaked in them, even if it’s just an aftermath.”

“Mh.”

“What?”

“It’s funny. That’s how I would describe your- the guilt. Only that that the stream keeps coming and I don’t know how- sorry. Sorry, I know you don’t want to talk about it. It’s complicated, is all.”

“It is. It is complicated. But I get it. We don’t want to see each other suffer. That tracks from what I know about love.”

“Really? What _do_ you know about love?”

“Shut up.”

“Why?”

“Stop smiling like that.”

“I am not smiling.”

“That’s just a lie, Martin.”

“Mh. So what if it is?”

“I don't know, maybe I can let it go for once.”

“Very generous of you.”

“I know, I am a gentleman." 

“Jon?”

“What?”

“I wish we could do love the normal way.”

“What do you mean?”

“The blushing part, and the first dates, and the flowers and the introducing each other to friends and families.”

“We are a bit short on friends, and very short on family. And we _had_ a first date.”

“Does you making me overcooked pasta count?”

“I think it should.”

“C’mon, Jon, you know what I mean. In another universe, we _have_ friends. If you take out the eldritch horror, there are so many more chances.”

“We met because of that eldritch horror.”

“Maybe we could have met some other way. I don’t know, bump each other on the streets.”

“An accidental meeting would not have done much, I think. I needed some serious convincing before I let myself love you.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Martin.”

“Mh?”

“You were good from the beginning, you know. I liked you from the start. I just couldn’t see it.”

“You don’t need to say that.”

“No, I do need to say it. You never needed to somehow prove yourself to me. I was blocking my own view, and the events that forced us together simply pushed me past the walls. But the walls were mine all along. You were always deserving of- _this_.”

“That’s not entirely true, Jon. I grew as well. I pushed myself out of my own shell, too.”

“Yes, but you are not the shell.”

“And you are not the walls.”

“Okay. Okay, so we are not our limits or our trauma. That seems reasonable. I just- it keeps coming back all the time and I don’t want that on top of everything else. I wish I could make it disappear.”

“You can try beholding all of our flaws. _Turn your gaze upon this unhealthy defense mechanism, ceaseless watcher_.”

“Please don’t say that sentence again.”

“I am just saying- you could always try.”

“Just shut up, Martin.”

“Never.”

“Mh- Martin?”

“What now?”

“I just- God, why is this still so hard.”

“It’s not like you haven’t said it before.”  
  
“Stop mocking me.”  
  
“I am not.”

“Alright, here it goes: I really love you.”

“Okay.”

“You know that, right?”

“Of course I know that.”

“And I was really, really scared to lose you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then why are you still-“

“I am thinking the _yet_ Martin. I won’t say it, but I am thinking it.”

“Well, we can’t afford to think that.“

“I know we can’t. But it’s a possibility. And it’s not that unlikely.”

“What do you want us to do about it?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing to do. I just don’t want to overlook a second of this. I don’t want to skip over a single moment of us walking together. Even if we have the worst fucking destination in the history of humankind.”

“That seems fair to me.”

“Glad we are in agreement.”

“I love you too, by the way.”

“I am aware.”

“That’s nice to hear. And, Jon- I know it means very little but thank you for choosing me. Really. Thank you.”

“I am extremely proud of that choice.”

”Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

“Do you feel better now?”

“I do. What about you?”

“I feel alright, all things considered.”

“So we are ready to get up?”  
  
“I think so.”  
  
“Then let’s go.” 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, tried experimenting with this cause I just love writing dialogue and it's fun to try and make it expressive without using external descriptions or adjectives. hoped you liked this!


	6. woke up new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Would it help to remember?” 
> 
> Martin frowns. “What do you mean?” 
> 
> “It’s hard to access that feeling again, the— sensation of waking up in a better world. But I— I remember it, Martin.”
> 
> Jon’s hand stills in Martin’s hair. He only moves his thumb now, gently, as if going over the surface of a painting to feel the texture of the overlapping strokes.
> 
> The first morning in Scotland had been peaceful. Not happy, not fixed, but peaceful. Martin hasn’t entirely forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updating this fic after 75 years! supposedly set somewhere after mag191 and before mag192. enjoy the melancholy. cw for talk about imminent loss

It’s hard to escape fear when it surrounds you.

If you are chased, you can run. If you are pushed, you can dig. If you are trapped, you can search for an exit.

When you are surrounded, either you lose or you die.

Martin pushes his fingertips against the skin of his left arm, as if sealing a letter with wax, and all he can bear to think about is his desire to win. The right words are trapped into his body, hushed by a force stronger than Martin ever remembers mastering. His calligraphy marks him from the inside out, hesitant but unashamed. It says things Martin doesn’t have the energy to repeat aloud.

“What are you thinking?” Jon asks him, and it’s a silly question. Useless, like those flowers you bring home despite knowing they’ll never survive without soil.

There’s no place to hide Jon’s candid interest but the spot of Martin’s jaw Jon is caressing with his fingers, and so Martin tries to make it fit. More than anything, he wishes he could record moments like these, press play on a machine and feel it all again: lay with Jon every day of his life knowing that their tragedy is still a book opened in the middle.

Unfortunately, Martin has never been good at preserving the past intact. He had always been too busy trying to fix it once it was already over, distorting it by crafting poems and unsent letters.

His mother didn’t like that he wrote so much. She was always suspicious of how he spent his time, and it was difficult to ignore her judgment, especially when Martin was struggling with time and trying to make sense of his story. He has no interest in lingering on the things _she_ would say about her own past, or try to guess how she dealt with it, but he does remember that she kept a leaf in her wallet. She used to bring it up in conversations as a trophy from her youth, a broken clock that reminded her of an old but familiar present. She had never tried to explain to him what it really meant, and Martin had never asked.

It’s hard to say whether that’s a good thing or not. He can’t imagine his mother telling him a story for the sake of including him into a part of their history. There weren’t enough bridges between them to walk all that distance.

To this day, Martin mourns the memories he has forever lost because he was never given the chance to live through them the first time. He had always wanted to be an old man with too many stories to tell, instead of a too-young amateur typing the hundredth interpretation of the same one. He certainly has stories now, but they are not the good kind.

Martin closes his hands in a fist. He tries to return to Jon’s question.

“The future doesn’t feel real,” he says, dry but not harsh. “I had assumed it would, at some point.”

Jon twists into his bag and pushes himself closer to Martin’s body, then moves his hand into his curls, and shuts his eyes. Martin is laying on his back, staring at the tunnel’s ceiling. He turns his head to see Jon resting beside him. His chest raises slowly, taking in all the air it probably doesn’t need.

“To be fair, time isn't a thing now. Hard to imagine that the future would be.”

“I know. I just don’t like that the good parts of our past feel like they come from another planet,” Martin replies, surprised by the smooth rhythm of his own voice, flat above the strength of his sorrow. “I am okay with not being able to see the future as long as I know I’ll have a past.”

It had always been easier to think of it in those terms. Not _I’ll see tomorrow and I’ll find a way to be happy,_ but _one day I’ll look back at today and know I made it through._

Jon keeps his eyes closed, but he raises his chin, as if trying to meet Martin’s gaze. There’s a chance that he actually _is_ looking, but Martin is too tired to ask. At this point, he doesn’t care either way.

“Would it help to remember?”

Martin frowns. “What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to access that feeling again, the— sensation of waking up in a better world. But I— I remember it, Martin.”

Jon’s hand stills in Martin’s hair. He only moves his thumb now, gently, as if going over the surface of a painting to feel the texture of the overlapping strokes.

The first morning in Scotland had been peaceful. Not happy, not fixed, but peaceful. Martin hasn’t entirely forgotten.

He remembers waking up while Jon was still sleeping. He remembers that Jon was pressed against him, and his right hand was curled in a loose fist on his naked chest.

The night before, they had tried talking over dinner, but neither of them was hungry. Eventually, they had gotten into bed, and Martin had asked him if he could take his shirt off. He hadn’t motivated the request, hadn’t explained how the Lonely made him feel so disconnected from his own body that sometimes he needed to be naked to his own senses so he could convince himself that he still was real; feel his skin tremble under cool winter air and call that proof of life.

Jon had either understood or known not to investigate. He had nodded, and that had been enough.

That night was the first time in a long while that someone Martin cared about made him feel beautiful. There had been others, of course, but, until then, it had been near impossible to acknowledge they ever existed.

When he got out of the bathroom, and Jon looked at him, open adoration painted everywhere on his face, it felt like a door suddenly burst open.

There _had_ been others.

Martin's first boyfriend after top-surgery, with his witty humour and his vocal, shameless compliments, who let him take the lead and always kissed him before saying goodbye (he was a photographer, and Martin had felt comfortable enough to ask him to take some pictures of him. It was something like artistic nudity, though it felt more casual than artistic. Elegant, yeah, but only in the way normalcy feels elegant: slowly and on accident. Martin kept the photographs after they broke up. It was all amicable, so they didn’t hurt to look back to); that incredibly attractive man that had gifted him one of his rings as a good-luck charm after spending a night together (the man was trans, too, and they had talked about their funniest experiences on dating apps in the chaotic corner of a small bar, before eventually taking the tube to the man’s apartment); the girl he met at poetry night when he was eighteen years old that had a passion for clothes even though she couldn’t always afford the ones she liked, and had pushed him to try on new things in two or three distinct dressing rooms (somehow, she always came off as encouraging and sharp without ever crossing lines. Martin didn’t think her poems were a groundbreaking work of genius, just like his weren’t the product of an unshakable talent, but they both enjoyed reading each other’s words).

All of them had mattered, once, and, somehow, they finally seemed to matter again. Martin had tried to talk about them to Jon. Sometimes, he had succeeded. Jon had always listened.

It had been marginally more complex, to bring up those that they _both_ knew. To not just say ex-boyfriend, one-night stand, old friend, but also: that cute guy who cleaned the Institute’s bathrooms. A nameless researcher who would compliment you on your outfit or make-up or shoes every time you got into their line of sight.

Sasha, with whatever qualities she had that made her so warm in Martin’s mind, whatever things she must have said to him to make Martin feel like she was important enough to be mentioned in a diary as “someone I wished I met earlier in my life”. Tim, with his relentless attempts at joy, with his cheesy pick-up lines and gentle kisses, left on your cheek like birthday presents for children who have forgotten when they were born.

These days, even more than in Scotland, guilt is always on the other side of memories. People have died under Jon and Martin’s watch, and whoever hasn’t is dying _now_ , mercilessly and a million times over.

Guilt doesn’t build new worlds, though. It doesn’t save what’s already ruined.

“Tell me, then. What is waking up to a better world like?” Martin says to Jon, after what feels like an eternity spent in silence. He can’t bring back the damned, but hope can’t be killed nor forgotten. And even if it can, it shouldn’t.

Jon shrugs at the question. “It was careless,” he starts, almost cynical, resigned to the finality of the past tense. "For those first five minutes in the morning, I was happy and it didn’t hurt. Not one bit. It was light. Felt like relief.”

A part of Martin, the same one that longs to see those he has lost, wants to talk about Salesa’s house. It wants to tell Jon how he looked that very first morning, the way he smiled. How he manoeuvred himself on top of Martin’s body to kiss his neck and thank him for keeping him alive. For never letting him go.

It still feels too cruel, though, to guard that moment alone. It was always meant to be shared.

“Do you think that’s ever gonna happen again?” Martin asks, instead. “Relief, I mean. Is that ever gonna be an emotion we can experience for more than five minutes at a time?”

Jon opens his eyes. He looks unbearably sad, and very much in love. It’s not the this-is-my-soulmate kind of love, and it does not feel inevitable. Jon looks like he _wants_ to love him. Like he is choosing it.

“I need you to promise me something,” he says, and it’s not hard to guess what he is about to say.

“Don’t even start,” Martin replies, firm. “We have already made our promises.”

Jon bites his lips for a moment, and his gaze flickers to the side. He is trying to phrase this in a way that doesn’t hurt. Waste of time. It’ll hurt anyway.

“Okay, then it’s not a promise. It’s a wish.”

Martin laughs, and it’s a bitter sound. Not loud enough to cut, but still sour. Melancholic.

“We both have a pretty bad track record with wishes.”

“I know,” he says, and he does. He must. “Can I say it anyway?”

How many ways are there to tell someone that you want them to survive your death? How do you prepare people from your loss, how do you gracefully introduce your partner to a life without you in it?

In Scotland, Martin had only thought about their future unintentionally. It was always— _wonder what he’ll get me on my birthday._ _Wonder if I’ll ever get around to showing him my favourite library. Wonder what he will look like as an old man. Wonder what our first big argument is gonna be about._

He still makes that mistake, sometimes. Stumbles into false equivalences. _He has learned that this topic makes me uncomfortable, so he’ll have time to learn how to approach me about it without hurting me by accident._

Witnessing growth is always gonna be more important than witnessing tragedies, but watching a tree stretch towards the sunlight knowing the sun won’t make it through the winter is its own kind of torture. Martin wants to get it over with. He wants to thank the tree for still trying.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Say it.”

Jon waits a moment before replying. He nods, slowly, as if calculating a complicated sum in his head. It’s that moment in horror movies where the character sits down to examine an old clock they found in a drawer, as if genuinely contemplating how old it must be—do they like it? Can they sell it? Should they bring it back home?

It’s a deliberate gamble. Another useless flower.

“If you feel that relief again,” Jon starts, slow and clear, “and I’m not there to feel it with you, get up anyway. Make yourself some tea, put on a sweater and turn up the heat. When the world comes back alive, if either one of us gets the chance to see it happen, I think we should take it.”

None of this feels likely. Martin can’t imagine turning up the heat in any normal London apartment. None of this will ever feel likely again, even in the case that it actually happens.

That’s not the point, though.

“Of course we should,” he whispers, and Jon brings his hand back to Martin’s cheek.

“Good,” he says. His smile is young, intentionally naive. It promises nothing, but it reads like a first sentence.

The forest rots and Martin tries his best to root for the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is after "woke up new" by the mountain goats.  
> the jon line that starts with “If you feel that relief again" is inspired by the lyrics. listen to it only if you would like to suffer 
> 
> as always, comments are appreciated, and thank you for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr as [mxrspider](https://mxrspider.tumblr.com/) 🌻


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